Starship Troopers

Join the Army and See the Universe. That is the motto of The Third Space War, also known as The First Interstellar War, but most commonly as The Bug War. In one of Robert Heinlein's most controversial best sellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the universe - and into battle with the Terrain Mobile Infantry against mankind's most alarming enemy.

Vampire$

Suppose there really were vampires. Dark, stalking, destroying. They’d have to be killed, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. But what kind of fools would try to make a living at it? In best-selling author John Steakley's vampire classic, one tightly knit band of brothers devotes itself to hunting down the monsters that infest the modern world—for a price.

The Forever War

William Mandella is a soldier in Earth's elite brigade. As the war against the Taurans sends him from galaxy to galaxy, he learns to use protective body shells and sophisticated weapons. He adapts to the cultures and terrains of distant outposts. But with each month in space, years are passing on Earth. Where will he call home when (and if) the Forever War ends?

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Old Man's War

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First, he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce - and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So, we fight, to defend Earth and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Terms of Enlistment: Frontlines, Book 1

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you’re restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

Edge of Tomorrow (Movie Tie-in Edition): All You Need Is Kill

When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally - the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death?

At the Sign of Triumph: Safehold, Book 9

The Church of God Awaiting's triumph over Charis was inevitable. Despite its prosperity, the Charis was a single, small island realm. It boasted less than two percent of the total population of Safehold. How could it possibly resist total destruction? The Church had every reason to be confident of a swift, crushing victory, an object lesson to other rebels.

Earth Alone: Earthrise, Book 1

They came from deep space. They came to destroy us. Fifty years ago bloodthirsty aliens devastated the Earth. Most of humanity perished. We fell into darkness. But now we rise from the ashes. Now we fight back. Marco Emery was born into the war. After his mother is killed, he joins the Human Defense Force, Earth's ragtag army. Emery must survive basic training, become a soldier, and finally face the aliens in battle. Against the alien onslaught, Earth stands alone. But we will fight. We will rise. We will win.

Warship: Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 1

In the 25th century, humans have conquered space. The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy?

The Secret of the Dark Forest: Way of the Shaman Series, Book 3

The virtual world of Barliona is a place of rest and entertainment - but not for everyone. It has become a survival arena for Daniel Mahan after he was sentenced to eight years in its virtual jail. Mahan has been through it all: the back-breaking work in the mines, betrayal by other prisoners, and finally, the retrial which has released him into Barliona's common world. What more could one want? Mahan could have kept a low profile and enjoyed relative freedom while serving the rest of his time.

The Siege of Earth: The Ember War, Book 7

Only an ember of humanity survived the first Xaros invasion. Now the Xaros return to deliver the final blow to Earth and her defenders. A moon carrying an armada of Xaros drones unleashes its deadly cargo on the solar system. Fortress Mars stands between the enemy and an ill-defended Earth. While the battle rages over the red planet, the Breitenfeld must launch a desperate mission to Pluto to cut off enemy reinforcements. Earth stands on the brink of ruin, and humanity needs every hero it can find to turn back the tide of destruction.

The Ember War: Publisher's Pack, Books 1-2

The Ember War, book 1: The Earth is doomed. Humanity has a chance. In the near future, an alien probe arrives on Earth with a pivotal mission: to determine if humanity has what it takes to survive the impending invasion by a merciless armada. The probe discovers Marc Ibarra, a young inventor who holds the key to a daring gambit that could save a fraction of Earth's population. Humanity's only chance lies with Ibarra's ability to keep a terrible secret and engineer the planet down the narrow path to survival.

Hell Divers: The Hell Divers Trilogy, Book 1

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

Counterstrike: Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3

Captain Jackson Wolfe never thought he'd see the end of the Phage War in his lifetime. The enemy was too powerful, too numerous, and utterly determined to exterminate humanity. But the appearance of a new ally in the fight has changed all of that. For the first time since the original incursion, Wolfe thinks that maybe there's a chance to stop their implacable enemy before they have the chance to wipe out any more human planets.

The Battle of the Void: The Ember War, Book 6

The Xaros drove humanity to the edge of extinction. Now, an immense alien fleet is on the way to Earth to end the human race. Earth's defenses are in shambles. The planet needs time to ready for the next invasion, time it doesn't have. The Xaros are en route to Earth, and it will take a daring mission to buy Earth the chance it needs to survive the next attack. While a fleet of brave men and women prepare to face down the Xaros, the Breitenfeld travels to an ancient world where the key to ultimate victory lies buried beneath the crimes of the enigmatic Malal.

A Learning Experience, Book 1

When a bunch of interstellar scavengers approach Earth intending to abduct a few dozen humans and sell them into slavery in the darkest, they make the mistake of picking on Steve Stuart and his friends, ex-military veterans all. Unprepared for humans who can actually fight, unaware of the true capabilities of their stolen starships, the scavengers rapidly lose control of the ship - and their lives.

A Hymn Before Battle: Legacy of the Aldenata

With Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the Galactic Federation offers help to the backward humans - for a price. You can protect yourself from your enemies, but God save you from your allies!

Blood of Heroes: The Ember War, Book 3

The Xaros, a galaxy-wide scourge of murderous drones, have their sights set on the planet Takeni. Captain Isaac Valdar volunteers his ship to defend the innocent civilians and evacuate everyone he can. Pressed by an alien fleet in space and a horrifying foe on the surface, the Breitenfeld must risk everything to save the doomed populace.

Steel World: Undying Mercenaries, Book 1

In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....

HALO: Smoke and Shadow

Find. Claim. Profit. In a postwar galaxy littered with scrap, it's the salvager's motto. And with a fast ship and a lust for adventure, Rion Forge has certainly made her mark on the trade. When the discovery of a wrecked UNSC cruiser brings Rion's past back to haunt her, stirring fresh hope into a decades-old wound, she's hell-bent on finding answers: What really happened to her father and his ship, the Spirit of Fire?

Star Carrier: Lost Colonies, Book 3

Earth builds her first war fleet! The greatest warships ever constructed in known space rise up one by one, soon dominating our skies. They strike fear into the hearts of every citizen and rebel colonist alike. Captain William Sparhawk, the very man who convinced the secretive Council to build this terrifying fleet, now has doubts about the project. What is their exact mission? How could anyone have built these huge ships so quickly? And, most puzzling of all, what's happening out at the isolated laboratory complex on Phobos, Mars' lopsided moon?

Hard Lessons: A Learning Experience, Book 2

Fifty years after Steve Stuart and his friends captured an alien starship, the Solar Union is a thriving interstellar power while Earth is increasingly backward and falling into barbarism. For two youngsters from Earth, the Solar Union offers the only chance they will ever have to make something of their lives.

Hyperion

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

Publisher's Summary

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered.

Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected not only by his custom-fitted body armor, the culmination of 10,000 years of the armorers' craft, but also by an odd being which seems to live with him, a cold killing machine he calls "the Engine."

There are really two stories here, that eventually come together, and they are somewhat different. The Felix narrative tracks the experience of an individual soldier in an interstellar war. Steakley expends little time on the tech details and essentially none on the politics, the war is apparently completely pointless, but focuses instead on the actual experience that Felix endures. The writing is distinctive, with a chopped flow and bursts of intensity that mirror the fighting, and Weiner's narration captures this. It's very fast paced, and I found it even a bit emotionally draining. Felix has a rough ride.

The Jack Crow character provides the comic release and I found that storyline a welcome break from the intensity of the Felix chapters. Again, Weiner brings out the fun in that part of the story.

Ultimately Armor is a psychological fable, more than simple military SF, examining how people think, act and feel under extreme situations, the nature of heroism, the many ways people are motivated... some people look tough but aren't, some are brave and don't know why, some know how to lead but don't want to... lot's of unexpected little character dimensions.

Be prepared for large parts of this story to make little sense or be complete mysteries. Why the war? How do the warring technologies match up? Where does this fight fit into the larger war? How could their intel be so completely wrong? I didn't mind this; the story is not about the war, it's about these people, and this is a much more realistic way that such events are actually experienced. Only in novels do we get the "God view" that gives us knowledge of everything. Not in this novel, however. This one's all about the characters and they repeatedly say that they don't have any idea what's going on, and since they don't, neither do we.

Like the others who have just posted reviews this is one of those books that I have been keeping an eye out for since I joined Audible. Like the Hyperion cantos this is book is more than science fiction, it is real literature that is a pleasure to read. At its heart this is a story about two very different psychopaths, One a bitter semi suicidal man who is driven by an inner demon that forces him to survive at all costs, and the other, A passionate maniac with a cunning vicious streak that he uses to accomplish his goals despite the guilt he occasionally feels.
This is not a David Weber or John Ringo style military novel. The technology is painted in broad strokes and in most places lacks any real detail. The energy weapons are simple called "Blazers", thrown weapons are "Blaze Bombs" the artillery are "Laser Cannon" Normally I hate this generic kind of sci-fi but in this book the characters are so well written that you feel the battle more than see it. This author is not a world builder or an armchair general but someone who can write the soul of a real killer, something that many so called military fiction writers fail at. Many people may not "get" this book but for those of us that have felt the touch of the "Engine" this is book is a striking experience.

Normally I don't rate the narrator, caring more about the story instead but in this case I will say that he does an excellent job. You can always tell who's speaking just by the voice of the character and the voices fit perfectly with what I imagined when I first read this book.

I have read 1000's and 1000's of genre books. When I hand out a sci-fi to friends as a recommendation, I often give them this one.

This book has two halves. The first one, think Starship Troopers the movie. I think the movie took more from this book than from Heinlein's story. Only this book has a soul, whereas the movie was all campy fun.

The second half starts off so quietly, its disconcerting. But if you give it a shot, it will reward you.

All together, this is one of my favorite genre books. I am saddened that the author died before writing anything other than one more book. If he had done more I think he would have been remembered as one of the giants of the field.

Sure, this is really good SciFi - but the technology aspects take a back seat to a really gripping story. It is the kind of science fiction that will never seem out of date. Felix is a take-no-prisoners soldier running away from his past, kinda like going into the French Foreign Legion. Crowe is an irreverant space pirate who breaks out of prison and is talked into being a saboteur. Their lives ultimately intersect in a way I never saw coming. I found myself listening to this every chance I could, every place I could get away with it. And, of course, there are the Ants - the last time I was so fascinated by an alien threat was the movie Aliens (a long time ago). From beginning to end, you won't regret it. Also, Weiner's narration is as good as it gets!

After nearly quitting Armor because of its lack of emotion, I was surprised to eventually find myself stressed out and sobbing. You won???t believe it at the beginning, but Armor becomes intensely emotional, especially for what???s considered a ???military SF??? novel. This is not merely ???military SF??? ??? it???s a novel about suffering, compassion, love, and the human survival instinct. It just takes a while to get there, which makes it even more gratifying when it finally shows itself.

I listened to Blackstone Audio???s version of Armor, narrated by Tom Weiner. His deep voice was perfect for a story with a bunch of rough men in it, but he did a great job with the female characters, too. I unhesitatingly recommend the audio version.

Armor isn???t the perfect novel ??? it???s hard to believe in the Antwar because we never understand why humans want to be on this toxic planet, it???s hard to believe in a computer glitch that can???t be fixed, and there???s some psychobabble that doesn???t hold up to 21st century psychology (Armor was published in 1984), yet this is a powerful, character-focused, deeply emotional novel about human suffering and the will to survive.

The ending of Armor is both devastatingly glorious and agonizingly inconclusive. John Steakley was writing a sequel when he died in November 2010. An excerpt of the sequel, which I believe was not finished, can be found at this fan website. But I don???t need a sequel ??? I like the way Armor ended.

I like Jack Reacher style characters regardless of setting. Put them in outer space, in modern America, in a military setting, on an alien planet... no worries. Book has non moralistic vigilante-justice? Sign me up!
(oh, I read urban fantasy, soft and hard sci-fi, trashy vampire and zombie novels too)

I like military sci-fi. And I like thoughtful sci-fi. And I don't mind explorations of psychology in my fiction. So I figured, based on most of the reviews, that I would like the the secondary story of Jack Crowe that everyone said "interrupts" the main military story.

I did not... Felix's story which starts the book (just over half the book) is an interesting butt-kicking military sci-fi battle... then we get about 1/3 of the book wasted on some stupid barely-related "moral-fest" starring Jack Crowe.

Fortunately, the story does get back on track before the end, and it is wrapped up okay, but I wish the author hadn't wasted so much time going on and on and on about Jack Crowe's "badness and redemption" theme.

I can see how some people reviewed the book badly. I almost stopped listening after the first crossover between Felix and Jack's perspectives. But it was oddly engaging in language and especially the Felix story line. I have listened to it several times and it accesses a sense of fatalism and futility that is a core element of the modern experience. I think it is a great work - certainly more appealing if you like whatever genre you feel Starship Troopers is in, but having more reach and depth than that book.

I had never heard of this book or the author when I bought the download. While I had some doubts initially, I am happy with the purchase. The narration is excellent and the story is pretty well constructed.

A midget standing on the shoulders of a giant (RAH, in this case) can sometimes see further than the giant himself. Two story lines and two central characters that seemingly couldn't be more unlike each other slowly intertwine for a pretty darned good yarn. I have to say that the antihero, Jack, starts out as almost too flawed a character to live with. It is painful to be living inside the head of such a cad. I found myself turning the story off just to give myself a break from the shame that rubbed off on me. To jump to the world of decimating ants on Banshee with the likes of Felix - a hero's hero -seemed a great relief. After all, what's there not to like about wandering around in body armor slaying bad guys?

I have pretty much exhausted Audible's selections of the tried-and-true science fiction authors I grew up with. I am happy to say that this book, in the end, delivered what I look for in sci fi.